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Published: June 19th 2008
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With the Bongo band from Tanzania, my roomates in Narobi
Bongo is the Swahili rap of Tanzania...there we are, rapping... Thanks for joining me in the second season of El Vagabundo. This time, I will be blogging from four countries in East Africa. The reason/excuse: a Summer assignment with CARE South Sudan, in an area that was in the middle of a civil war only three years ago. Looking forward to it.
First stop, The Green City in the Sun. Nairobi is the quintessential NGO and international organization hub in Africa. As I saw in Kampala last year, NGO personnel tend to live all together in residential blocks, heavily guarded. However, in Nairobi the sense of insecurity is way higher.
Let me tell you how I got my introduction to Nairobi, courtesy of hostelworld.com. I had no idea that CARE had its own guest house until a couple of days before leaving Washington, when, after receiving my travel plan, my contact in CARE told me she thought I was going to stay with them…but I already had a reservation at a hostel that looked actually pretty good on the HW.com webpage…
Wrong, very wrong…. I ended up near downtown, in an area that provoked the same reaction in everyone, local and foreigner: ‘ARE YOU STAYING THERE?? THAT AREA
Dancing, Western Kenya style...with a latino flava
...hard to resist, just the call of my African roots... IS VERY DANGEROUS…’
Yeah, reassuring…well, let’s just say that the last time I felt this unsafe was around midnight in downtown Napoli…but seriously, I had no problem, some random people asking for money, my Peruvian wristband, or a t-shirt, but smiling and showing no fear helped…(as I discovered, smiling actually helps to show no fear, plus, I’m a Peruvian from Maranga City, nothing can happen to me…right?).
However, let me assure you: walking Nairobi, even the area where I stayed, during the day, is perfectly safe (don’t be too flashy, though…), well, except for the death horsemen, disguised here as crazy drivers, or as I call them, ‘007’, with a bloody license to kill… But at nighttime, not such a good idea to look like a tourist…
The hostels in this area are actually for locals, mostly students coming from the province. Here, I met my first Kenyan friend. Betty is 20 and is in her second year of medicine at the University of Nairobi. She likes the city, coming from a little town in Western Kenya, but her dream is to go to ‘America’ and become a surgeon, and see again her oldest brother, who is
Nancy y Evita
en YAYA Center, Nairobi in good old Alabama. Betty will soon be part of a strong and numerous Kenyan Diaspora in the States, and who knows! Maybe her grandson or granddaughter gets a chance to run for US President. And let me tell you, people talk a lot about Obama here….newspapers call it… Obamania, of course.
‘Jambo, Excuse me, do you know where I can find a place to buy food?’
‘Hmm..hold on! I will take you!’, Betty said
‘Asante! (Thanks!)’
Betty took me across downtown Nairobi in my first exploration of the city, which at times seems like frozen in the 70’s…She helped me find the first two things any decent backpacker needs to locate: where to find beer (and guys, let me tell you, I love Tusker, I will even buy the t-shirt, no shame…), and the nearest internet café (here in Nairobi, ‘cybercafes’).
Nairobi left me a stronger impression than Addis and Kampala in terms of the contrasts between the affluent and the poor. There is a Kenyan upper-middle class, and it seems dominated by Hindu and Asian entrepreneurs. Hindu products are in fact widespread here, I even found my favorite cookies, Parle-G, talk about globalization…
Some
Typical Maasai home...
all straw and dung, and very solid! of the pics, taken from the hostel, show this contrast, with old shacks being used as night accommodation or as hair salons (!), and garbage in the front, and big modern buildings in the backdrop.
The second day, CARE’s people asked me to move into their guest house, so I left the hostel. Although the place was kind of shady, the people there were extremely nice. The first pic of this entry is with my roommates, the Bongo band from Tanzania, who were playing at local bars in Nairobi for a few days….
I met my new Ecuadorian friends, Nancy and the beautiful Evita, at YAYA, the local shopping mall, with modern and expensive stores inside, and a lively crafts street market outside, where Kenyans, Mzungus (white men), mchina (Asians), and mwhindu (hindus) mingle and engage in frenetic (and sometimes a little too heavy) negotiations (did you notice no word for latins?? Some say latino, but there seems not to be a swahili word for us…but they love reggaeton here too..)
Nancy has been in Nairobi for the past 4 years, and likes it, although she does not feel safe enough to go out at night…life is
In a Mijikenda village...
... el guardia chequeando si hay moros en la costa (o bueno, en la jungla...) kind of limited in this sense…Nancy’s family story is typical of the development family: a few years here, others somewhere else; her husband, who is Hungarian, lives and works now in one of the most conservative towns in Afghanistan, surrounded by Talibans.
My new roommate at the CARE’s guesthouse, John, is American, a big Mr. Bean fan, and has a story not less nomadic. Peace Corps in Kenya, seventeen years working with CARE all over Africa and Asia, and now in charge of a program with small farmers in Somalia, he is now condemned (and not very happy about it) to work in Nairobi for a while, because of the insecurity reigning in Somalia.
Nairobi has many things to see and do, but time was a tyrant and I must leave tomorrow for the real deal in this trip: South Sudan. As a final activity, I went to a traditional Kenyan dances show, called the Bomas of Nairobi: dances and village models of the 49 Kenyan tribes. If you know me, you figured out that I couldn’t resist trying a little dancing myself…but I also learned a few interesting things on efficient space management in Kenyan villages: the
Husband can have many wives, but the largest “Tukut” (house) in the family land is always for the first wife. The clever thing about the space distribution of Tukuts, is that, of course, the house of the latest (and youngest) wife is always closer to the one of the husband…pretty clever, pretty sneaky…
And that was Nairobi. Still pending when I come back, a visit to the baby elephants, and a lavish dinner at the famous Carnivore, where you can eat from zebra to alligator and ostrich. Should be good…
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